The world’s best competitive unicyclists head to Montreal this week for the 17th Unicycling World Championships. Among them is the factory team of Kris Holm Unicycles, the namesake company of a Vancouver man credited with bringing unicycles to the mountains. The Sun spoke with Holm, 41, about his career-long battle to bring legitimacy to the one-wheeled sport and his eventual shift away from death-defying riding.

Q: What drew you to riding on one wheel instead of the traditional two?

A: I’ve always been interested in minimalist, individualist, balance-oriented sports. I got my first unicycle after watching a street performer in Victoria performing on one. I was 11 years old and his name was Yuri Toufar. He’s never seen me since and I’m sure he never recalled the encounter, but for me it was inspirational.

Q: So if there had been no Yuri there might be no mountain unicycling?

A: People had probably been riding bicycles and unicycles on dirt paths since the 1800s, but it wasn’t a sport. I was one of the first to treat it as a serious sport.

Q: When you started riding North Shore trails, were you the only guy up there on one wheel?

A: I was. I moved to Vancouver from Victoria in 1998 and at the time my main focus in life was rock climbing. This happened to be the golden age of free-ride mountain biking on the North Shore, and I shifted my focus from climbing to riding. The first big mountain bike movies were starting to happen at that time and word got around that some guy was riding the trails on a unicycle and I started being part of some of these movies.

Q: Extreme might be a word when people watch some of your videos. Is it always like that?

A: It’s impossible to stereotype the sport as extreme. Like mountain biking, the sport ranges from casual rides through the UBC Endowment Lands through to the most difficult terrain in the world. Many people prefer it to biking because it’s safer.

Q: Why is that?

A: Even though you do fall more and it’s more technically difficult, the consequences of falling are much less. Rarely have I done a ride where I haven’t fallen off the unicycle at one point or another, but that simply involves jumping off it.

Q: You’ve also done urban riding — what drew you away from the North Shore?

A: Whether something’s an urban feature or an obstacle just depends on your perspective. A bench or a railing is only a bench or a railing if that’s all you thought of it as. From the perspective of a BMX rider, a skateboarder, or a mountain unicyclist, it could be something to ride on and that’s just another way to push your limits. It was never for me about riding these things as stunts as much as it was exploring what was possible.

Q: Do you always view the city through that lens?

A: I do. You tend to start viewing things from a certain perspective. It’s like if you’re a skier, you look at the side of a mountain and everything becomes a possible line. A climber looking at a cliff, everything you see — the features, the cracks — they become routes. If you like to ride urban things, everything becomes a potential obstacle. But I much prefer being in a wilderness environment.

Q: One time you rode along the railing of the Burrard Bridge in Vancouver. What were you thinking?

A: When I climbed a lot I was pushing my mental limits as well as my physical limits and if you talk to just about any adventure sport athlete, usually what they’re really seeking is total engagement with what they’re doing. That’s really where you get the true satisfaction out of your activity and there is nothing that demands more focus than putting yourself in a position of great consequence. It’s something that I explored for a brief period, but it’s not something I do anymore.

Q: How does one prepare for something like that?

A: When I would look at a line like that, I would anticipate what might go wrong and then have an honest assessment of my ability. If I thought that my ability was high enough, with enough margin for error, then I would go for it. I would also say that even though things like the Burrard Bridge are most spectacular and they’re the ones that get international attention, they’re actually not the most difficult.

Q: Are you now or have you ever been afraid of severe injury or death?

A: I’ve definitely moved toward riding more conservatively and I’ve moved away from filming much of this kind of riding. Filming generally looks good when you’re on the edge of disaster. It requires knowing exactly where the line is between being adventurous and being stupid.Now at 41 with two kids, I push my limits in my own way, but definitely not in the same way that I once did.

Q: What did people say when they saw you do things like ride along the edge of The Chief in Squamish?

A: At the time that it was done it was quite shocking, because up until that point there had been no one in the public sphere that was doing anything like this at all. It was completely unknown. At the time, people would be amazed if you could ride down a sidewalk, then footage like that came out and there was worldwide impact. It went from being completely obscure to an extreme sport, while, in fact, the reality was somewhere in the middle.

Q: Why did you decide to start your unicycle gear company, KHU?

A: I needed a unicycle that could withstand the kind of punishment that I wanted to do. In 1998 worked with a local machine shop, Toby’s Cycle Works, to build my first custom unicycle. A year later was the Internet revolution, and suddenly if you had a niche sport, you could have a market. Today, KHU is distributed in more than a dozen countries.

Q: You’re credited with founding competitive unicycling trials — a component of the upcoming championships. Can you explain what that is?

A: It’s obstacle riding. The purpose is to get over technically difficult obstacles in a course from start to finish. The rider that rides the most number and the hardest obstacles without falling is the winner.

Q: You later got into adventure riding and went to some impressive places. What stands out among the highlights?

A: All the trips I’ve had a chance to do stand out. We spent a month riding through high mountain passes in Bhutan in 2002. These were areas where few Westerners had ever been at the time. As far as we knew we were the first unicycle riders to ever set foot in the country.

Q: How do people in places like that react when they see you on one wheel?

A: Definitely you stand out as a curiosity when you’re riding, but in some ways it doesn’t stand out as much as here. In my experience, travelling on and off a unicycle, just about anything you do as a Westerner is odd and stands out. Strangely, it seems like I get the same reactions when riding a unicycle regardless of whether I’m in Bhutan or in Vancouver.

Q: Is it hard to be at the sidelines, watching riders from the KHU factory team head to the World Championships?

A: For me, it’s a time of transition. It doesn’t hurt, but it demands an honest reflection of your goals and an honest assessment of your ego. In some ways it’s been easy, because my major goals as a rider were to expand and grow the sport. Sponsoring a factory term is a natural extension of that. It’s the new generation of riders that are riding at the highest level and it’s an honour to have a part in supporting that.

Q: What was your most memorable competition?

A: The last one was my best one. I competed in the men’s solo challenge division of the B.C. Bike Race in 2010. I came fifth out of 25 people in my class and third on one of the days. I was the only unicyclist. The others were on mountain bikes. That was probably my proudest competitive moment.

Q: What kind of riding are you doing these days?

A: Mostly I pull my toddler behind my unicycle in a chariot stroller. It’s fantastic. We sneak out and visit trails in the endowment lands and have fun together. It’s an incredible way to get out and have fun.

Q: Can anyone ride unicycles in the mountains?

A: If you can ride 50 metres you can do anything. It just takes a couple of weeks of pretty hard effort and after that it’s just like a bike — you’d wonder why you never knew how to do it before. The Vancouver Unicycle Club is a good resource.

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